Dan Barrera: Other Guys Got Injured in Matt Hughes' Practices

Dan Barrera, a cast member on “The Ultimate Fighter: Team Hughes vs. Team Serra” who suffered a hand injury just days before his fight, says he wasn’t the only fighter to suffer an injury during Matt Hughes’ intense training sessions.

As many MMAjunkie.com readers know, Barrera was the only cast member we didn’t get to interview for our weekly “Ten TUF Questions” feature. However, Morgan has a great interview with the fighter that answers all our questions.

In the interview, Barrera confirms that the hand injury likely happened during a tough training session with Hughes — and that he wasn’t the only fighter to get injured. He also mentioned a neck injury suffered by teammate Billy Miles.

“Our practices were basically just gut checks every day,” Barrera said. “I can’t compare it to anything else I’ve ever done in my life. If you missed practice, everybody showed up early, everybody stayed, and they took their lickin’s, man. They didn’t show a lot of it, but they were pretty tough rundown practices.”

Barrera also discussed how the hand injury affected his fight with Ben Saunders in the season’s sixth episode. Barrera dropped his opponent early in the fight, but he took a lot of criticism when he didn’t follow up immediately afterward. Saunders rebounded to win the fight. However, according to Barrera, he thought he suffered a broken hand from the punch.

“After I threw that right and knocked him down and he had a broken nose, I thought that I broke my hand to tell you the truth… I felt like I seriously broke my hand,” Barrera said. “I just got a shot of pain all the way up to my spine and I just kind of hesitated for a second… If you’ve got that much adrenaline pumping and you feel that pain, then that’s not good because usually you don’t feel your injuries until the next morning because youâ??re so juiced up on adrenaline.”

Barrera also discusses his wife (everything is fine), his infamous bathroom shadow-boxing sessions (they were exaggerated), and the job he gave up at the firefighter department (they never did give it back to him).

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